Writer-director Tyler Perry has shined up another 16-ton anvil of subtlety for "Temptation," a scold-y, finger-wagging morality tale that uses fear and shame to browbeat married women into towing the line and behaving themselves.

And really, who better to shill for the institution of marriage than 43-year-old bachelor Perry, who uses homophobia as a punch line (or symbol of evil decadence) and HIV as a cheap plot gimmick?

Besides being a cautionary tale told with all the finesse of a U.S. Army training film about the horrors of syphilis, "Temptation" qualifies as science fiction, since it takes place in two parallel universes: One is the recognizable world where adults have career and relationship issues, and the other is the Tyler Perry–verse of convenient coincidence, abrupt character shifts and pat homilies.

(It's also a place where people pursue jobs like pharmacist and therapist armed only with bachelor's degrees, but that's another issue.)

Judith (Jurnee Smollett-Bell) and Brice (Lance Gross) are childhood sweethearts who have left their tiny Southern hamlet to pursue their dreams in Washington, D.C.: She wants to be a marriage counselor and he has dreams of owning his own small-town drugstore. This apparently entails working ...